The Iliad and the Odyssey

By Homer

Two of the greatest adventure stories of all time, these timeless epics of war, duty, honor, and revenge are filled with magic, mystery, and an assortment of gods and goddesses who meddle freely in the affairs of men. The Iliad recounts the war between the Trojans and the Achaeans and the personal and tragic struggle of the fiery-tempered Achilles. The Odyssey chronicles Odysseuss return from the Trojan War and the trials he endures on his journey home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fall River Press
• Release date: May 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781435160262

Homer

Although recognized as one of the greatest ancient Greek poets, the life and figure of Homer remains shrouded in mystery. Credited with the authorship of the epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, Homer, if he existed, is believed to have lived during the ninth century BC, and has been identified variously as a Babylonian, an Ithacan, or an Ionian. Regardless of his citizenship, Homer’s poems and speeches played a key role in shaping Greek culture, and Homeric studies remains one of the oldest continuous areas of scholarship, reaching from antiquity through to modern times.

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THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY

HOMER

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This 2014 compilation published by Fall River Press.

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ISBN 978-1-4351-6026-2

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Contents

Introduction

The Iliad

Contents

Preface

Principal Personages

The Iliad

The Odyssey

Contents

Preface

Principal Personages

The Odyssey

Introduction

Homer’s two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, stand with the supreme masterworks of world literature, yet the stories they tell are among the first that many of us ever hear. When I was a small boy, my steel-worker father would perch me on his lap and make my eyes grow wide with tales of a ten-years-long war fought over the most beautiful woman in the world and won by a sneaky trick, then go on to describe a one-eyed Cyclops, the Sirens and their irresistible singing, a huge whirlpool and a six-headed monster, the witch Circe who turned sailors into swine, magical winds and a despised beggar who cast off his rags to take bloody revenge with a bow no one but he could string. At that time these episodes from the Trojan War and Odysseus’s long voyage home struck me as the best stories in the world. Many years and many stories later, I haven’t changed my mind.

Few other works, apart from the Bible, Shakespeare’s plays, and perhaps Ovid’s Metamorphoses (that sourcebook of ancient myth) have so deeply entered our cultural bloodstream. In Dante’s Inferno Ulysses—the Latin form of Odysseus—reappears as a restless quester after knowledge who sails to the edge of the world and beyond. Christopher Marlowe captured Helen’s beauty in two famous lines: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/And burned the topless towers of Ilium? Myriad paintings, sculptures, ballets, and operas have drawn on Homer’s stories. Even Rider Haggard (author of that classic boys’ adventure King Solomon’s Mines) and Andrew Lang (of fairy-tale fame) teamed up to write The World’s Desire, wherein Ulysses—searching for Helen in Egypt—falls prey to an incarnation of Haggard’s celebrated femme fatale Ayesha, better known as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. James Joyce’s Ulysses slyly modernizes the Odyssey, and Derek Walcott’s book-length poem Omeros gives Homer a Caribbean accent.

When people think of Troy, they usually think first of the Trojan Horse. Yet that incident plays no part in the Iliad, which focuses on the anger of Achilles and its consequences. Only in the Odyssey does the blind bard Demodocus, while reciting poems about Troy, mention Odysseus’s clever stratagem. Virgil adds further details in the Aeneid (first century B.C.E.), his Latin epic about the adventures of Aeneas and the founding of Rome. Yet the episode of the gigantic hollow horse packed with armed warriors was known in full throughout ancient times because Homer’s poems made up only two parts of an epic cycle about Troy. These other poems are lost, aside from their titles and a few fragments, but we do know the general outline of what they contained:

Cypria relates the story of the Judgment of Paris, in which the Trojan prince of that name must award a golden apple to the fairest of three goddesses. He chooses Aphrodite because she promises that in return he will possess the most beautiful woman in the world. Before long, Paris has run off with Helen, the wife of Menelaus, and returned to Troy.

The Iliad is the poem we know. To reclaim his errant wife and take revenge, Menelaus enlists his brother Agamemnon as the general of a Greek army that sails to Troy in a thousand ships. The Iliad proper actually begins nine years into the siege, when everyone is growing restive and tempers are strained. The poem opens with an out-of control quarrel—over a concubine—between the somewhat supercilious Agamemnon and his deadliest fighter, Achilles. Feeling that his honor has been sullied, Achilles retreats to his tent and threatens to simply go home. Much of the epic then describes the ebb and flow of battle, and that admirable family-man Hector emerging as the great champion of Troy. (Hector means the wall of his people.) But when this Trojan prince kills Achilles’s best friend, Patroclus, the sulky Greek warrior vows a bloodfest in revenge. Many men die, including Hector, whose corpse is abused and mutilated. Bereft, the aged Trojan King Priam begs for the body of his son and Achilles—in a touching moment of humane understanding and personal transcendence—allows the old man to take it back into Troy for burial. The poem then ends with the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses. Alas, the war itself will continue.

Aithiopis describes more of the war and ends with the death and funeral of Achilles, who had chosen a brief but glorious life over a long and obscure one. This poem also includes an account of Achilles’ battle with Penthisilea, the queen of the Amazons, who had come to aid the Trojans and with whom he fell in love—when it was too late.

Ilias Parva, or Little Iliad, focuses on the subterfuge of the Trojan Horse as a means to enter Troy and includes the contest between the sturdy Ajax and wily Odysseus over Achilles’s armor. (Odysseus wins the armor; Ajax then goes temporarily mad and eventually kills himself out of shame.)

Iliu Persis, or The Sack of Troy, relates the actual taking of the city and the general massacre that followed, including the killing of Hector’s father, Priam, and infant son, Astyanax, as well as the rape of Cassandra, the prophetess whom no one ever believes. Hector’s wife, Andromache, becomes the concubine of Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.

The Nostoi survey the homecomings of the various heroes, including that of Agamemnon who is immediately murdered by his faithless wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. (This story, followed by the revenge of Electra and Orestes for the slaying of their father, provides the plot for Aeschylus’s three-play sequence, The Oresteia. Zeus refers to Agamemnon’s murder at the beginning of the Odyssey.)

Odyssey is the nostos, or homeward voyage, of the resourceful and crafty Odysseus, the man of many turns. He suffers and endures much—including the loss of at least 600 men and twelve ships—before he finally lands on his home island of Ithaca, alone. There he discovers that 108 suitors have been laying siege to his wife, Penelope, hoping she will choose one as her new husband, but in the meantime eating and drinking up everything in his household. Disguised as a beggar, and with the help of his now grown son, Telemachus, Odysseus eventually slaughters these interlopers, cleanses his house of their pollution, and looks forward to a life of quiet and rest.

Telegonia caps the cycle with a bizarre minuet-like neatness. Telegonus, Odysseus’s son by the enchantress Circe, accidentally kills his father and then marries Penelope, while Telemachus, Odysseus’s son by Penelope, in due course marries Circe. They all live happily together on the enchantress’s magical isle.

All these poems were apparently known in ancient times, though the Iliad and the Odyssey towered above the others in artistry and repute. Indeed, together this pair assumed a place in Greek culture somewhat comparable to the Bible, Torah, or Koran as a kind of sacred scripture. Their author might be referred to as simply The Poet. Homer provided a code of conduct, a compendium of inspirational example, a history of the founding fathers of Greece, a guide to storytelling and oratory, a source for Athenian drama and poetry, and, not least, the common fount of wisdom for statesmen and ordinary citizens. Rhapsodes—aoidoi—memorized the poems in their entirety and they were regularly recited at festivals. Plato’s Republic actually ends with a vision of the Homeric heroes in the afterlife (where most choose to be reincarnated as eagles or lions, but Odysseus wishes to come back as a perfectly ordinary man). In his Poetics Aristotle refers to Homer’s poems as complementary models of narrative construction: "the Iliad is at once simple and ‘pathetic’ and the Odyssey complex (for ‘recognition’ scenes run through it) and at the same time ‘ethical.’" Alexander the Great, it is said, carried the Iliad with him while on campaign.

By the second century B.C., Lucian’s satirical True History was poking fun at Homer: Lucian visits the Isles of the Blessed and runs into Odysseus, who surreptitiously asks him to take a love letter to Calypso, expressing regret for turning down the offer of immortality and saying he’ll be seeing her soon. Around the same time the famous Library of Alexandria was editing and providing annotations (scholia) for the two poems. Even now we possess more early manuscripts of The Iliad and The Odyssey than of any other works from antiquity.

Yet, sadly, knowledge of the Homeric poems, except in the Byzantine Empire, was soon lost for a thousand years. By the end of the fourth century A.D. knowledge of Greek began to die out in western Europe. During the Middle Ages writers and thinkers only knew Homer from summaries, or gained a skewed sense of the Iliad from two Latin works of late antiquity (fourth to sixth century A.D.): Dictys the Cretan’s supposed Diary of the Trojan War, told from the Greek side, and Dares the Phrygian’s History of the Destruction of Troy, related from the Trojan point of view. These inspired several medieval romances on the so-called matter of Troy.

Homer finally started his comeback in 1354 when the Italian poet Petrarch procured a Byzantine manuscript of the Iliad and the Odyssey. It was translated into Latin, since Petrarch couldn’t read Greek (his friend Boccaccio did learn the language). In 1488 the first printed editions in Greek appeared and more and more scholars began to study the recovered language in earnest. In 1598, George Chapman brought out an English version of the first 10 books of the Iliad and eventually went on to translate the remainder, as well as the Odyssey.

Since the rebirth of Greek studies during the Renaissance, the English-speaking world has been steadily fascinated by Hellenism and by Homer in particular. The great seventeenth-century epic, Paradise Lost, opens by deliberately echoing the Iliad’s invocation of the Muse and, despite its orotund Latinate diction, possesses a strength and grandeur almost equal to its pagan model. The blind Milton naturally identified with the reputedly blind Homer.

During the eighteenth century Alexander Pope produced the equivalent of a bestseller with his rendering of the Iliad into heroic couplets. Several distinguished modern classicists—Jasper Griffin and Bernard Knox, for instance—rate Pope’s Iliad the finest translation of Homer in the language. (Pope’s Odyssey is uneven, since much of it was written by two helpers.) Pope’s contemporary, the classical scholar Richard Bentley, reportedly observed, A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer. Yet Pope’s verse possessed real strength: Now on the field Ulysses stands alone/The Greeks all fled, the Trojans pouring on;/But stands collected in himself and whole.…

During the later eighteenth century scholarship started to revolutionize our historical understanding of Homer. F.A. Wolf, in his Prologemenon ad Homerum (1795), argued that the poems had been composed orally during a time when the Greeks were unacquainted with writing, then passed down for four centuries through recitation until they could be set down on papyrus. The artistic unity of the works is largely due to the work of editors.

By the time Queen Victoria ascended her throne, Homer had become a central text in British education, a sourcebook for the heroic ideals of empire, and the preferred recreation of noble minds. William Gladstone himself, the most eminent prime minister of nineteenth-century England, actually published seven books about Homer and was a leading figure in Homeric scholarship, despite sometimes crackpot attempts to see ancient customs as fundamentally Christian. By contrast, his contemporary, the poet and essayist Matthew Arnold, brought out what is still regarded as one of literary criticism’s most brilliant works, On Translating Homer. In this essay Arnold, after critiquing a recent rendering of the poems (by Francis Newman, the brother of John Henry, Cardinal Newman), rattled off what he regarded as Homer’s four primary qualities as a writer: The general effect of Homer, he tells us, is that of a most rapidly moving poet, that of a poet most plain and direct in his style, and that of a poet most plain and direct in his ideas, that of a poet eminently noble.

The iconoclast Samuel Butler agreed with those principles, except perhaps for the last. This wit (Man is a jelly which quivers so much as to run about), novelist (The Way of All Flesh), visionary (the Utopian Erewhon), and amateur Greek scholar grew obsessed with Homer. The Odyssey, he became convinced, was written by a woman—in fact, it was written by a young, headstrong and unmarried girl of aristocratic birth resident in what is now Trapania, Sicily. According to Butler’s The Authoress of the Odyssey, she even portrays herself in the poem as the lovely princess Nausicaa. On the surface, all this sounds deranged. But as Alexander Pope notes in the very leisurely introduction to his translation of the Iliad, there is a legend that Homer, while in Egypt, actually stole his poems from a woman named, improbably, Phantasia. Butler took this notion seriously—but only for the Odyssey—and developed it, and at the least inspired Robert Graves to create one of his most unusual historical novels, Homer’s Daughter.

Whatever its truth, Butler’s theory underscores the significant differences in tone, construction, and character of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The former is grand, somber, and heartbreaking, while the latter is almost a fairy tale, the adventures of a Greek trickster. In fact, many scholars now believe that the Odyssey may have been influenced by Near Eastern epics like Gilgamesh and the kind of folktales gathered together in the Arabian Nights; it almost certainly borrowed some of Odysseus’s close calls from an earlier epic about Jason and the Argonauts. At heart, the Iliad is tragic, while the Odyssey seems a kind of romance, almost a picaresque novel.

In effect, Butler’s own translations, relying on a straightforward, quick-paced prose, transformed the epics into works of Victorian fiction. Even now such an approach makes his version—reprinted in this volume—an ideal introduction to Homer: clear, direct, and invitingly readable.

There has long been considerable speculation and bitter controversy about the dating, historicity, authorship, and method of composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is now generally believed that Homer’s poems, though written down in the seventh or eighth century B.C.E., were composed using oral formulas, and describe a world similar to that of the bronze-age Mycenean culture of 1200 B.C.E., centered at Knossos and Pylos. Excavations at Hissarlik in Turkey—first begun by Heinrich von Schliemann in the 1860s—continue to unearth the remains of a great city that may have been Troy. Scholars have attempted, more or less seriously, to trace Odysseus’s voyage and identify the islands he visited.

Even though the Iliad takes place in a single small geographical area and covers only 55 days of the war, Homer manages to suggest vast tracts of time and history. He does this through the back-stories of his combatants, the retelling of myths and legends, the input of the gods, and through his brilliant similes. Repeatedly, he illuminates a martial scene by comparing it to something homely and familiar:

As countless swarms of flies buzz around a herdsman’s homestead in the time of spring when the pails are drenched with milk, even so did the Achaeans swarm on to the plain to charge the Trojans and destroy them.

As a horse, stabled and full fed, breaks loose and gallops gloriously over the plain to the place where he is wont to bathe in the fair-flowing river—he holds his head high, and his mane streams upon his shoulders as he exults in his strength and flies like the wind to the haunts and feeding ground of the mares—even so went forth Paris from high Pergamus, gleaming like sunlight in his armor, and he laughed aloud as he sped swiftly on his way.

Open to any page of Homer, and there is never anything vague or less than concrete. Each detail is presented in sharp focus in an orderly fashion.

Just so are all the major characters distinct personalities, from the petulant goddess Aphrodite to the equally petulant Achilles, a James Dean or Jim Morrison of the battlefield. As the critic Mark Van Doren observed: Achilles will die young, yet he looks and moves like one who will live forever. While sulking, the killing machine diverts himself by playing on a stolen lyre and singing the feats of heroes. (Even for the heroes of Troy, the real heroic age is already in the past.) He only returns to the battle out of a desire to revenge the death of his friend Patroclus. To many readers, the most admirable character in the poem is the stoically resigned Hector, happiest with his wife and child—little Astyanax is frightened by the plume on his father’s helmet—but duty-bound to fight for his city. Each man will have his aristeia—his moment of glory, when he sweeps through battlefield like a thresher through wheat. Both fight knowing that fate is against them: Hector recognizes that Troy will eventually fall, Achilles knows that he is doomed to an early death. But there is no self-pity in either of them. As Achilles tells Priam’s son Lycaon, who has been bartering for his life:

Talk not to me of ransom. Until Patroclus fell I preferred to give the Trojans quarter, and sold beyond the sea many of those whom I had taken alive; but now not a man shall live of those whom heaven delivers into my hands before the city of Ilium—and of all Trojans it will fare hardest with the sons of Priam. Therefore, my friend, you too shall die. Why should you whine in this way? Patroclus fell, and he was a better man than you are. I too—see you not how I am great and goodly? I am son to a noble father and have a goddess for my mother, but the hands of doom and death overshadow me all as surely. The day will come, either at dawn or dark, or at the noontide, when one shall take my life also in battle, either with his spear, or with an arrow sped from his bow.

At which point Lycaon gives up pleading and is killed. As Oliver Taplin has written, "The Iliad is not so much concerned with what people do, as with the way they do it, above all the way they face suffering and death."

By contrast, the Odyssey is pitched at a much less intense level. Its first word, andra, means man, and the poem really does focus on the fortunes and vicissitudes of its hero, as he tries to reach home. (His nostos is, so to speak, fueled by nostalgia.) Resourceful, cautious, and omnicompetent, Odysseus seems far more modern than Achilles or Agamemnon. He wants his glory to be recognized—why else would he finally reveal his real name to the blinded Polyphemus?—but his real talent is for survival. To do that requires all his talent for wariness and cunning. Over the course of the poem Odysseus smoothly gives out one phony account after another of who he is; sometimes he’s Phoenician, other times a brother of Idomineus, and, with Polyphemus the Cyclops, he’s at first Nobody at all. Above all, he’s the man of many parts—even flirting with Athene and braving the land of the dead to consult the prophet Tiresias. For while arguably greater men, like Achilles, Agamemnon, Ajax, and Hector die, Odysseus lives. There is his triumph, even if it lacks tragic grandeur.

While the Iliad focuses on men at war, living in makeshift camps as they fight before the walls of Troy or along the banks of the Scamander river, the Odyssey for all its geographical restlessness is surprisingly domestic. It shows us a world largely at peace, and its great theme is hospitality, nearly the opposite of Achilles’s anger. In ancient times, households extended hospitality—xeinia—to weary strangers and travelers. Or were supposed to. Penelope’s suitors abuse this privilege; the Cyclops inverts it (he doesn’t feed his guests—he eats them), Circe and Calypso bend it to their sensual purposes. How often does Odysseus land on an island and wonder what kind of welcome he will receive? And is there any other classical hero who talks so much about hunger, his belly, and the need for food?

The Phaeacians, who dwell in a kind of Greek Shangri-la, entertain the half-drowned stranger with honor—and it is to them that Odysseus eventually tells his true story. Those celebrated Sinbad-like adventures occupy only books nine through twelve of this twenty-four-book epic. Most of the second half of the poem takes place on Ithaca, and offers even greater, if quieter thrills: the moment when Odysseus’s old dog, Argus, who has waited twenty years, recognizes his master; the moment when the nurse Euyclea touches the tell-tale scar and knows the identity of the stranger before her; the dramatic moment when the reviled beggar carefully examines the great bow for dry rot, then suddenly strings it and plucks it like a lyre, before notching an arrow: Dogs, did you think that I should not come from Troy? You have wasted my substance, have forced my womenservants to lie with you, and have wooed my wife while I was still living. You have feared neither God nor man, and now you shall die.

And they do. Every last one.

What, in the end, does one take away from the Iliad and the Odyssey? The immensely influential eighteenth-century classical scholar Johann Joachim Winckelmann spoke of eine edle Einfalt und eine stille Grosse—a noble simplicity and a calm greatness. The critic Guy Davenport aptly points to Homer’s wonderfully generous mind, impartially accepting the world in all its diversity. Others might stress his wisdom about the contagious nature of war, or his depiction of Odysseus as the first modern man. But I think Ezra Pound got it right when he stressed Homer’s perennial freshness. After more than 2,500 years, the Iliad and the Odyssey still speak to us, unforgettably, about nearly everything in life that matters.

Michael Dirda, who received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, is the author of the memoir An Open Book and of four collections of essays: Readings, Bound to Please, Book by Book, and Classics for Pleasure.

THE

ILIAD

Contents

PREFACE: By Samuel Butler

Principal Personages of The Iliad

BOOK I: Quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. Achilles withdraws in anger from the war, and secures Zeus’ aid for his enemies, the Trojans.

BOOK II: Agamemnon’s dream causes him to test his men. Nestor and Odysseus incite the army to fight. Both sides prepare for battle.

BOOK III: Menelaus challenges Paris to single combat to decide the war. Sacrifices are made to solemnize the truce. Paris is rescued from defeat by Aphrodite.

BOOK IV: The Gods decide to intervene. Athene comes from Olympus and incites Pandarus to break the truce. Agamemnon marshals his men.

BOOK V: Diomed performs great exploits with the help of Athene. Ares, who aids the Trojans, is finally driven from the field.

BOOK VI: Hector goes back to Troy to offer sacrifices. He comforts Andromache and rebukes Paris, whom he finds with Helen. The brothers return to the fray.

BOOK VII: Hector and Ajax meet in single combat, which is halted by nightfall. The Greeks build a wall. Paris refuses to give up Helen.

BOOK VIII: Zeus forbids the gods to intervene. The Greeks are forced back behind their wall, leaving the Trojans in command of the field.

BOOK IX: Agamemnon proposes a return to Greece. He is chided by his chiefs. Achilles, besought, refuses to reenter the fight.

BOOK X: In the night Agamemnon sends Diomed and Odysseus to spy on the enemy. They learn the disposition of forces and kill King Rhesus.

BOOK XI: Agamemnon leaves the field wounded. Hector leads the Trojans forward and the Greeks retreat. Nestor offers a plan for deceiving the Trojans.

BOOK XII: The Trojans assail the wall on foot. The defense is headed by the two Ajaxes. The Trojans pour over the wall.

BOOK XIII: Poseidon, angered with Zeus, rallies the Greeks. Idomeneus performs valorous deeds. Still the Trojans advance.

BOOK XIV: The Greeks are hard pressed. Hera, to distract Zeus from aiding the Trojans, entices him to Mount Ida. The fortunes of battle now favor the Greeks.

BOOK XV: Zeus, discovering Hera’s guile, tells her the Greeks will conquer Troy. Hector leads another attack, and Achilles is told of the danger.

BOOK XVI: Patroclus, wearing Achilles’ armor, puts the Trojans to flight. In the pursuit he is disabled by Apollo, then slain by Hector.

BOOK XVII: Trojans and Greeks struggle over the body of Patroclus. The Greeks finally capture the body and make for the ships.

BOOK XVIII: Achilles, enraged by Patroclus’ death, decides to reenter the conflict. Thetis asks Hephaestus to make him new armor.

BOOK XIX: Agamemnon and Achilles are reconciled. The Greeks prepare for battle. Achilles is warned of approaching death.

BOOK XX: Zeus tells the gods they may take part in the war. Apollo incites Aeneas to attack Achilles, who slaughters countless Trojans.

BOOK XXI: Angered by Achilles’ carnage the River Scamander overflows. The gods battle each other on the field. The routed Trojans flee behind their wall.

BOOK XXII: Hector stands alone to face Achilles. He flees, then turns and fights, tricked by Athene, and is slain. The Trojans mourn.

BOOK XXIII: Achilles drags Hector’s body to the Greek camp. Sacrifices are offered in honor of Patroclus and funeral games are held.

BOOK XXIV: Guided by Hermes, Priam goes to the Greek camp to ransom Hector’s body. Achilles, moved to pity, gives it up. Hector’s funeral is celebrated.

Preface

The headmaster of one of our foremost public schools told me not long since that he had been asked what canons he thought it most essential to observe in translating from English into Latin. His answer was that in the first place the Latin must be idiomatic, in the second it must flow, and in the third it must keep as near as it could to the English from which it was being translated.

I said, Then you hold that if either the Latin or the English must perforce give place, it is the English that should yield rather than the Latin?

This, he replied, was his opinion; and surely the very sound canons above given apply to all translation. The genius of the language into which a translation is being made is the first thing to be considered; if the original was readable, the translation must be so also, or however good it may be as a construe, it is not a translation.

It follows that a translation should depart hardly at all from the modes of speech current in the translator’s own times, inasmuch as nothing is readable, for long, which affects any other diction than that of the age in which it is written. We know the charm of the Elizabethan translations, but he who would attempt one that shall vie with these must eschew all Elizabethanisms that are not good Victorianisms also.

For the charm of the Elizabethans does not lie in their Elizabethanisms; these are but as the mosses and lichens which Time will grow upon our Victorian literature as surely as he has grown them upon the Elizabethan—upon such of it, at least, as has not been jerry-built. Shakespeare tells us that it is Time’s glory to stamp the seal of time on aged things. No doubt; but he will have no hands stamp it save his own; he will rot an artificial ruin, but he will not glorify it; if he is to hallow any work it must be frankly secular when he deigns to take it in hand—by this I mean honestly after the manner of its own age and country. The Elizabethans probably knew this too well to know that they knew it, but whether they knew it or no they did not lard a crib with Chaucerisms and think that they were translating. They aimed fearlessly and without taint of affectation at making a dead author living to a generation other than his own. To do this they transfused their blood into his cold veins, and quickened him with their own livingness.

Then the life is theirs not his? In part no doubt it is so; but if they have loved him well enough, his life will have entered into them and possessed them. They will have given him of their life, and he will have paid them in their own coin. If, however, the mouth of the ox who treads out the corn may not be muzzled, and if there is to be a certain give and take between a dead author and his translator, it follows that a translator should be allowed greater liberty when the work he is translating belongs to an age and country widely remote from his own. For a poem’s prosperity is like a jest’s—it is in the ear of him that hears it. It takes two people to say a thing—a sayee as well as a sayer—and by parity of reasoning a poem’s original audience and environment are integral parts of the poem itself. Poem and audience are as ego and nonego; they blend into one another. Change either, and some corresponding change, spiritual rather than literal, will be necessary in the other, if the original harmony between them is to be preserved.

Happily in the cases both of the Iliad and the Odyssey we can see clearly enough that the audiences did not differ so widely from ourselves as we might expect after an interval of some three thousand years. But they differ, especially in the case of the Iliad, and the difference necessitates a greater amount of freedom on the part of a translator than would be tolerable if it did not exist.

Freedom of another kind is further involved in the initial liberty of rendering in prose a work that was composed in verse. Prose differs from verse much as singing from speaking or dancing from walking, and what is right in the one is often wrong in the other. Prose, for example, does not permit that iteration of epithet and title, sometimes due merely to the requirements of meter, and sometimes otiose, which abounds in the Iliad without in any way disfiguring it. We look, indeed, for the iteration and enjoy it. We are never weary of being told that Juno is white-armed, Minerva gray-eyed, and Agamemnon king of men; but had Homer written in prose he would not have told us these things so often. Therefore, though frequently allowing common form epithets and titles to recur, I have not less frequently suppressed them.

Lest, however, the reader should imagine that I have departed from the letter of the Iliad more than I have, I will give the first fifty lines or so of the best prose translation that has yet been made—I mean that of Messrs. Leaf, Lang, and Myers, to which throughout my work I have been greatly indebted. Often have they saved me from error, and rarely have I found occasion to differ from them as to the meaning of a passage. I do not believe that I have translated a single paragraph without reference to them, but this said, a comparison of their opening paragraphs with my own will show the kind of way in which I differ from them as to the manner in which Homer should be translated.

Their translation (here, by Dr. Leaf) opens thus:

Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles Peleus’ son, the ruinous wrath that brought on the Achaians woes innumerable, and hurled down into Hades many strong souls of heroes, and gave their bodies to be a prey to dogs and all winged fowls; and so the counsel of Zeus wrought out its accomplishment from the day when strife first parted Atreides king of men and noble Achilles.

Who then among the gods set the twain at strife and variance? Even the son of Leto and of Zeus; for he in anger at the king sent a sore plague upon the host, that the folk began to perish, because Atreides had done dishonour to Chryses the priest. For he had come to the Achaians’ fleet ships to win his daughter’s freedom, and brought a ransom beyond telling; and bare in his hands the fillet of Apollo the Far-darter upon a golden staff; and made his prayer unto all the Achaians, and most of all to the two sons of Atreus, orderers of the host: Ye sons of Atreus and all ye well-greaved Achaians, now may the gods that dwell in the mansions of Olympus grant you to lay waste the city of Priam, and to fare happily homeward; only set ye my dear child free, and accept the ransom in reverence to the son of Zeus, far-darting Apollo.

Then all the other Achaians cried assent, to reverence the priest and accept his goodly ransom; yet the thing pleased not the heart of Agamemnon son of Atreus, but he roughly sent him away, and laid stern charge upon him, saying, Let me not find thee, old man, amid the hollow ships, whether tarrying now or returning again hereafter, lest the staff and fillet of the god avail thee naught. And her will I not set free; nay, ere that shall old age come on her in our house, in Argos, far from her native land, where she shall ply the loom and serve my couch. But depart, provoke me not, that thou mayest the rather go in peace.

So said he, and the old man was afraid and obeyed his word, and fared silently along the shore of the loud-sounding sea. Then went that aged man apart and prayed aloud to King Apollo, whom Leto of the fair locks bare, Hear me, god of the silver bow, that standest over Chryse and holy Killa, and rulest Tenedos with might, O Smintheus! If ever I built a temple gracious in thine eyes, or if ever I burnt to thee fat flesh of thighs of bulls or goats, fulfil thou this my desire; let the Danaans pay by thine arrows for my tears.

So spake he in prayer, and Phoebus Apollo heard him, and came down from the peaks of Olympus wroth at heart, bearing on his shoulders his bow and covered quiver. And the arrows clanged upon his shoulders in his wrath, as the god moved; and he descended like to night. Then he sate him aloof from the ships, and let an arrow fly; and there was heard a dread clanging of the silver bow. First did he assail the mules and fleet dogs, but afterward, aiming at the men his piercing dart, he smote; and the pyres of the dead burnt continually in multitude.

I have given the foregoing extract with less compunction, by reason of the reflection, ever present with me, that not a few readers—nor these the least cultured—will prefer Dr. Leaf’s translation to my own. Throughout my work I have taken the same kind of liberties as those that the reader will readily detect if he compares Dr. Leaf’s rendering with mine. But I do not believe that I have anywhere taken greater ones. The difference between us in the prayer of Chryses, where Dr. Leaf translates If ever I built a temple, etc., while I render If ever I decked your temple with garlands, etc., is not a case in point, for it is due to my preferring Liddell and Scott’s translation. I very readily admit that Dr. Leaf has in the main kept more closely to the words of Homer, but I believe him to have lost more of the spirit of the original through his abandonment (no doubt deliberate) of all attempt at stately, and at the same time easy, musical, flow of language, than he has gained in adherence to the letter—to which, after all, neither he nor any man can adhere.

These last words may suggest that I claim graces which Dr. Leaf has not attained. I can make no such claim. All I claim is to have done my best towards making the less sanguinary parts of the Iliad interesting to English readers. The more sanguinary parts cannot be made interesting; indeed I doubt whether they can ever have been so, or even been intended to be so, to a highly cultivated audience. They had to be written, and they were written; but it is clear that Homer often wrote them with impatience, and that actual warfare was as distasteful to him as it was foreign to his experience. Happily there is much less fighting in the Iliad than people generally think.

One word more and I have done. I have burdened my translation with as few notes¹ as possible, intending to reserve what I have to say about the Iliad generally for another work to be undertaken when my complete translation of the Odyssey has been printed. Lastly, the reception of my recent book, The Authoress of the Odyssey, has convinced me that the general reader much prefers the Latinized names of gods and heroes to those which it has of late years been attempted to popularize: I have no hesitation, therefore, in adhering to the nomenclature to which Pope, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Derby have long since familiarized the public.²

Samuel Butler

August 8, 1898

¹ Butler’s sparse and not very helpful notes have been omitted.

² The names of gods and goddesses have been changed back to the Greek.

Principal Personages of The Iliad, Their Parentage, and Position

(The names by which they were known to Romans are in parentheses.)

Gods and Goddesses

ZEUS (Jove), son of Cronus (Saturn); king of the gods and ruler of the sky, arbiter of human destiny.

POSEIDON (Neptune), son of Cronus; king of the sea; favors the Greeks.

HADES, son of Cronus; ruler of the underworld of the dead.

HERA (Juno), daughter of Cronus and wife of Zeus; queen of the gods; favors the Greeks.

ATHENE (Minerva), daughter of Zeus; favors the Greeks.

APOLLO, son of Zeus and Leto; favors the Trojans.

ARTEMIS (Diana), daughter of Zeus and Leto; favors the Trojans.

APHRODITE (Venus), daughter of Zeus and Dione; favors the Trojans.

ARES (Mars), son of Zeus; favors the Trojans.

HEPHAESTUS (Vulcan), son of Zeus and Hera; favors the Greeks.

HERMES (Mercury), son of Zeus; favors the Trojans.

IRIS, messenger of the gods.

PAEËON, physician to the gods.

THETIS, a sea nymph, wedded to a mortal, Peleus; mother of Achilles.

GOD OF THE RIVER SCAMANDER, also called Xanthus; favors the Trojans.

Greeks, called by Homer Achaeans, Danaans, or Argives

AGAMEMNON, son of Atreus; king of Argos and Mycenae; leader of the host.

MENELAUS, son of Atreus and husband of Helen; king of Sparta, also called Lacedaemon.

ACHILLES, son of Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis, grandson of Aeacus, son of Zeus; chief of the Myrmidons from Phthia and Hellas.

NESTOR, son of Neleus; aged king of Pylus and Dorium; father of Antilochus and Thrasymedes.

ODYSSEUS (Ulysses), son of Laertes and husband of Penelope; king of Ithaca and leader of the Cephallenians.

AJAX, son of Telamon; ruler of Salamis.

AJAX, son of Oïleus; ruler of Locris.

DIOMED, son of Tydeus and grandson of Oeneus; king of Middle Argos, Tiryns, and Aegina.

IDOMENEUS, son of Deucalion and grandson of Minos, king of Crete.

TLEPOLEMUS, son of Heracles; from Rhodes.

PATROCLUS, son of Menoetius; comrade and squire of Achilles.

PHOENIX, son of Amyntor; foster son of Achilles’ father and old friend of Achilles; ruler of the Dolopians in Phthia.

STHENELUS, son of Capaneus; comrade of Diomed.

MERIONES, son of Molus; comrade and squire of Idomeneus.

ANTILOCHUS, son of Nestor.

TEUCER, illegitimate son of Telamon, half brother of the first Ajax; a bowman.

CALCHAS, son of Thestor; seer and interpreter of omens.

MACHAON, son of the healer Asclepius; physician to the Greeks.

THERSITES, ugliest of the Greek soldiers; an endless talker.

ASCALAPHUS, leader of the Miniae; son of Ares.

TALTHYBIUS and EURYBATES, Greek heralds.

Trojans

PRIAM, son of Laomedon and descendant of Tros, the founder of Troy, and of Dardanus, son of Zeus; king of Troy.

PARIS, also called Alexander, son of Priam; seducer of Helen.

HECTOR, son of Priam; commander of the Trojan army.

HELENUS, son of Priam; soothsayer for the Trojans.

DEÏPHOBUS and LYCAON, sons of Priam.

ANTENOR, aged counselor to Priam and the Trojans.

SARPEDON, son of Zeus and Laodamia, grandson of Bellerophon; leader of the Lycians.

GLAUCUS, son of Hippolochus and grandson of Bellerophon; comrade and squire of Sarpedon.

AENEAS, son of Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite; leader of the Dardanians.

RHESUS, son of Eoneus; king of Thrace.

PANDARUS, son of Lycaon; chief of Telea, near Mount Ida.

POLYDAMAS, son of Panthoüs; Trojan warrior and councilor.

ARCHELOCHUS, LAODOCUS, and ACAMAS, sons of Antenor.

DOLON, son of Eumedes; scout for the Trojans.

IDAEUS, Trojan herald.

Women in Troy

HECUBA, wife of Priam; queen of Troy.

HELEN, daughter of Tyndareus and wife of the Greek king Menelaus; brought by Paris to Troy.

ANDROMACHE, daughter of Aëtion, king of Cilicia; wife of Hector and mother of his little son, Astyanax.

LAODICE, daughter of Priam and Hecuba; wife of Helicaon, son of Antenor.

CASSANDRA, daughter of Priam and Hecuba.

THEANO, daughter of Cisseus and wife of Antenor; priestess of Athene.

Scene of the Action

The plain before Troy, through which flows the river Scamander, also called Xanthus.

The camp of the Greeks around their black ships, which lie drawn up in a long row on the edge of the seashore.

The city of Troy, also called Ilium, on a height above the plain, with its citadel, called Pergamum.

The seat of the gods on Mount Olympus in northern Thessaly.

Book I

Agamemnon is compelled to restore the captive girl Chryseis to her father, but in retaliation takes from Achilles the lovely Briseis. Achilles, enraged, vows he will fight no more for Agamemnon and through his mother, the sea nymph Thetis, secures the aid of Zeus for the Trojans. This provokes the wrath of the goddess Hera.

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Zeus fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles first fell out with one another.

And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Zeus and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people, because the son of Atreus had dishonored Chryses, his priest. Now Chryses had come to the ships of the Achaeans to free his daughter and had brought with him a great ransom. Moreover, he bore in his hand the scepter of Apollo wreathed with a suppliant’s wreath, and he besought the Achaeans, but most of all, the two sons of Atreus, who were their chiefs.

Sons of Atreus, he cried, and all other Achaeans, may the gods who dwell in Olympus grant you to sack the city of Priam and to reach your homes in safety; but free my daughter and accept a ransom for her, in reverence to Apollo, son of Zeus.

On this the rest of the Achaeans with one voice were for respecting the priest and taking the ransom that he offered; but not so Agamemnon, who spoke fiercely to him and sent him roughly away. Old man, said he, let me not find you tarrying about our ships, nor yet coming hereafter. Your scepter of the god and your wreath shall profit you nothing. I will not free her. She shall grow old in my house at Argos far from her own home, busying herself with her loom and visiting my couch. So go, and do not provoke me or it shall be the worse for you.

The old man feared him and obeyed. Not a word he spoke, but went by the shore of the sounding sea and prayed apart to King Apollo whom lovely Leto had borne. Hear me, he cried, O god of the silver bow; that protectest Chryse and holy Cilla and rulest Tenedos with thy might, hear me, O thou of Sminthe! If I have ever decked your temple with garlands, or burned your thighbones in fat of bulls or goats, grant my prayer and let your arrows avenge these my tears upon the Danaans.

Thus did he pray, and Apollo heard his prayer. He came down furious from the summits of Olympus, with his bow and his quiver upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled on his back with the rage that trembled within him. He sat himself down away from the ships with a face as dark as night, and his silver bow rang death as he shot his arrow in the midst of them. First he smote their mules and their hounds, but presently he aimed his shafts at the people themselves, and all day long the pyres of the dead were burning.

For nine whole days he shot his arrows among the people, but upon the tenth day Achilles called them in assembly—moved thereto by Hera, who saw the Achaeans in their death throes and had compassion upon them. Then, when they were got together, he rose and spoke among them.

Son of Atreus, said he, I deem that we should now turn roving home if we would escape destruction, for we are being cut down by war and pestilence at once. Let us ask some priest or prophet, or some reader of dreams (for dreams, too, are of Zeus) who can tell us why Phoebus Apollo is so angry, and say whether it is for some vow that we have broken, or hecatomb that we have not offered, and whether he will accept the savor of lambs and goats without blemish, so as to take away the plague from us.

With these words he sat down, and Calchas, son of Thestor, wisest of augurs, who knew things past present and to come, rose to speak. He it was who had guided the Achaeans with their fleet to Ilium, through the prophesyings with which Phoebus Apollo had inspired him. With all sincerity and good will he addressed them thus:

Achilles, loved of heaven, you bid me tell you about the anger of King Apollo; I will therefore do so; but consider first and swear that you will stand by me heartily in word and deed, for I know that I shall offend one who rules the Argives with might, and to whom all the Achaeans are in subjection. A plain man cannot stand against the anger of a king who, if he swallow his displeasure now, will yet nurse revenge till he has wreaked it. Consider, therefore, whether or no you will protect me.

And Achilles answered: Fear not, but speak as it is borne in upon you from heaven, for by Apollo, Calchas, to whom you pray, and whose oracles you reveal to us, not a Danaan at our ships shall lay his hand upon you while I yet live to look upon the face of the earth—no, not though you name Agamemnon himself, who is by far the foremost of the Achaeans.

Thereon the seer spoke boldly. The god, he said, is angry neither about vow nor hecatomb, but for his priest’s sake, whom Agamemnon has dishonored, in that he would not free his daughter nor take a ransom for her. Therefore has he sent these evils upon us and will yet send others. He will not deliver the Danaans from this pestilence till Agamemnon has restored the girl without fee or ransom to her father and has sent a holy hecatomb to Chryse. Thus we may perhaps appease him.

With these words he sat down, and Agamemnon rose in anger. His heart was black with rage, and his eyes flashed fire as he scowled on Calchas and said: Seer of evil, you never yet prophesied smooth things concerning me, but have ever loved to foretell that which was evil. You have brought me neither comfort nor performance; and now you come seeing among the Danaans, and saying that Apollo has plagued us because I would not take a ransom for this girl, the daughter of Chryses. I have set my heart on keeping her in my own house, for I love her better even than my own wife, Clytemnestra, whose peer she is alike in form and feature, in understanding and accomplishments. Still I will give her up if I must, for I would have the people live, not die; but you must find me a prize instead, or I alone among the Argives shall be without one. This is not well; for you behold, all of you, that my prize is to go elsewhither.

And Achilles answered: Most noble son of Atreus, covetous beyond all mankind, how shall the Achaeans find you another prize? We have no common store from which to take one. Those we took from the cities have been awarded; we cannot disallow the awards that have been made already. Give this girl, therefore, to the god, and if ever Zeus grants us to sack the city of Troy we will requite you three and fourfold.

Then Agamemnon said: Achilles, valiant though you be, you shall not thus outwit me. You shall not overreach and you shall not persuade me. Are you to keep your own prize, while I sit tamely under my loss and give up the girl at your bidding? Let the Achaeans find me a prize in fair exchange to my liking, or I will come and take your own, or that of Ajax or of Odysseus; and he to whomsoever I may come shall rue my coming. But of this we will take thought hereafter; for the present, let us draw a ship into the sea, and find a crew for her expressly; let us put a hecatomb on board, and let us send Chryseis also. Further, let some chief man among us be in command, either Ajax, or Idomeneus, or yourself, son of Peleus, mighty warrior that you are, that we may offer sacrifice and appease the anger of the god.

Achilles scowled at him and answered: You are steeped in insolence and lust of gain. With what heart can any of the Achaeans do your bidding, either on foray or in open fighting? I came not warring here for any ill the Trojans had done me. I have no quarrel with them. They have not raided my cattle or my horses, or cut down my harvests on the rich plains of Phthia; for between me and them there is a great space, both mountain and sounding sea. We have followed you, Sir Insolence! for your pleasure, not ours—to gain satisfaction from the Trojans for your shameless self and for Menelaus. You forget this, and threaten to rob me of the prize for which I have toiled, and which the sons of the Achaeans have given me. Never when the Achaeans sack any rich city of the Trojans do I receive so good a prize as you do, though it is my hands that do the better part of the fighting. When the sharing comes, your share is far the largest, and I, forsooth, must go back to my ships, take what I can get and be thankful, when my labor of fighting is done. Now, therefore, I shall go back to Phthia; it will be much better for me to return home with my ships, for I will not stay here dishonored to gather gold and substance for you.

And Agamemnon answered: Fly if you will, I shall make you no prayers to stay you. I have others here who will do me honor, and above all Zeus, the lord of counsel. There is no king here so hateful to me as you are, for you are ever quarrelsome and ill-affected. What though you be brave? Was it not heaven that made you so? Go home, then, with your ships and comrades to lord it over the Myrmidons. I care neither for you nor for your anger; and thus will I do: since Phoebus Apollo is taking Chryseis from me, I shall send her with my ship and my followers, but I shall come to your tent and take your own prize Briseis, that you may learn how much stronger I am than you are, and that another may fear to set himself up as equal or comparable with me.

The son of Peleus was furious, and his heart within his shaggy breast was divided whether to draw his sword, push the others aside, and kill the son of Atreus, or to restrain himself and check his anger. While he was thus in two minds, and was drawing his mighty sword from its scabbard, Athene came down from heaven (for Hera had sent her in the love she bore to them both), and seized the son of Peleus by his yellow hair, visible to him alone, for of the others no man could see her. Achilles turned in amaze, and by the fire that flashed from her eyes at once knew that she was Athene. Why are you here, said he, daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus? To see the pride of Agamemnon, son of Atreus? Let me tell you—and it shall surely be—he shall pay for this insolence with his life.

And Athene said: I come from heaven, if you will hear me, to bid you stay your anger. Hera has sent me, who cares for both of you alike. Cease, then, this brawling, and do not draw your sword. Rail at him if you will, and your railing will not be vain, for I tell you—and it shall surely be—that you shall hereafter receive gifts three times as splendid by reason of this present insult. Hold, therefore, and obey.

Goddess, answered Achilles, however angry a man may be, he must do as you two command him. This will be best, for the gods ever hear the prayers of him who has obeyed them.

He stayed his hand on the silver hilt of his sword, and thrust it back into the scabbard as Athene bade him. Then she went back to Olympus among the other gods, and to the house of aegis-bearing Zeus.

But the son of Peleus again began railing at the son of Atreus, for he was still in a rage. Winebibber, he cried, with the face of a dog and the heart of a hind, you never dare to go out with the host in fight, nor yet with our chosen men in ambuscade. You shun this as you do death itself. You had rather go round and rob his prizes from any man who contradicts you. You devour your people, for you are king over a feeble folk; otherwise, son of Atreus, henceforward you would insult no man. Therefore I say, and swear it with a great oath—nay, by this my scepter, which shall sprout neither leaf nor shoot, nor bud anew from the day on which it left its parent stem upon the mountains—for the ax stripped it of leaf and bark, and now the sons of the Achaeans bear it as judges and guardians of the decrees of heaven—so surely and solemnly do I swear that hereafter they shall look fondly for Achilles and shall not find him. In the day of your distress, when your men fall dying by the murderous hand of Hector, you shall not know how to help them and shall rend your heart with rage for the hour when you offered insult to the bravest of the Achaeans.

With this the son of Peleus dashed his gold-bestudded scepter on the ground and took his seat, while the son of Atreus was beginning fiercely from his place upon the other side. Then uprose smooth-tongued Nestor, the facile speaker of the Pylians, and the words fell from his lips sweeter than honey. Two generations of men born and bred in Pylos had passed away under his rule, and he was now reigning over the third. With all sincerity and good will, therefore, he addressed them thus:

Of a truth, he said, a great sorrow has befallen the Achaean land. Surely Priam with his sons would rejoice, and the Trojans be glad at heart if they could hear this quarrel between you two, who are so excellent in fight and counsel. I am older than either of you; therefore be guided by me. Moreover, I have been the familiar friend of men even greater than you are, and they did not disregard my counsels. Never again can I behold such men as Pirithoüs and Dryas, shepherd of his people, or as Caeneus, Exadius, godlike Polyphemus, and Theseus, son of Aegeus, peer of the immortals. These were the mightiest men ever born upon this earth—mightiest were they, and when they fought the fiercest tribes of mountain savages they utterly overthrew them. I came from distant Pylos and went about among them, for they would have me come, and I fought as it was in me to do. Not a man now living could withstand them, but they heard my words, and were persuaded by them. So be it also with yourselves, for this is the more excellent way. Therefore, Agamemnon, though you be strong, take not this girl away, for the sons of the Achaeans have already given her to Achilles; and you, Achilles, strive not further with the king, for no man who by the grace of Zeus wields a scepter has like honor with Agamemnon. You are strong and have a goddess for your mother, but Agamemnon is stronger than you, for he has more people under him. Son of Atreus, check your anger, I implore you; end this quarrel with Achilles, who in the day of battle is a tower of strength to the Achaeans.

And Agamemnon answered: Sir, all that you have said is true, but this fellow must needs become our lord and master: he must be lord of all, king of all, and captain of all, and this shall hardly be. Granted that the gods have made him a great warrior, have they also given him the right to speak with railing?

Achilles interrupted him. I should be a mean coward, he cried, were I to give in to you in all things. Order other people about, not me, for I shall obey no longer. Furthermore I say—and lay my saying to your heart—I shall fight neither you nor any man about this girl, for those that take were those also that gave. But of all else that is at my ship you shall carry away nothing by force. Try, that others may see; if you do, my spear shall be reddened with your blood.

When they had quarreled thus angrily, they rose, and broke up the assembly at the ships of the Achaeans. The son of Peleus went back to his tents and ships with the son of Menoetius and his company, while Agamemnon